Beverage logistics: how does Coca-Cola get into the bottle and to the consumer?

These sounds belong to the soundtrack of summer: the opening of the fridge door, the clinking of glass bottles, the hissing of the cap being taken off. Ice-cold Coca-Cola in the little 0.2-litre bottle is an icon. "Mercedes-Benz Transport" made its way to the source and then accompanied the little bottle on its journey. And it begins, for example, in Hildesheim. Here is one of the 16 Coca-Cola production locations in Germany. The approximately 500 employees of the plant ensure that full bottles leave the five production lines around the clock. The goal this year: to fill a million litres every day.

The gigantic production hall is full of sounds: buzzing, clanging and tinkling. The conductor of this orchestra: Alexander Haferkamp. The 35-year-old production manager must have everything in his sights: have enough empty bottles been delivered? How long will the syrup last? For what size bottles do the production lines have to be prepared right now? All the machines are monitored, malfunctions and anomalies are precisely recorded. Mechanics stand at the ready in order to keep downtimes to a minimum. For the master brewer and his team, no day is the same as another.

Precisely coordinated processes.

However, for the little Coke bottle the process is indeed always the same. After their delivery the bottles and crates are separated, cleaned and sorted. Two employees remove differently-shaped bottles from the conveyor belt. The following step sees any foreign objects there may be removed from the bottle. The journey continues to the next station: the bottle washing system. "At 80 degrees Celsius, the bottles are immersed successively in two different leach solutions and are then rinsed out with clear water. After this the bottle is absolutely clean", says Haferkamp. Now it's the "inspector's" turn: this is a device that scans bottle by bottle, and no flaw or damage, no matter how small, escapes its attention.

Only then does the decisive moment come: the coke gets put into its bottle. Before this, the beverage is mixed in some unassuming tanks in a neighbouring hall. The mixture itself is made from drinking water, syrup – the recipe is a closely-guarded secret – and of course carbon dioxide.

The reusable filling line can handle between 40,000 and 46,000 bottles per hour. "It is the heart of the production line and sets the pace: the output of the other production devices is adjusted to suit its specific filling capacity", says Production Manager Haferkamp. Depending on the speed, for example, eleven bottles per second receive their labels and crown caps before they go through a final quality control and land in the clean yellow crates.

From Achim and into the region, reliably.

From 11 a.m., orders for the following day are compiled paperlessly using an electronic warehousing management system. The warehouse employees are on the move with ten order pickers so that the customers receive the exact products they want from the 300-odd on offer. A worker moves up to 18 tons per shift; this is equivalent to about two truckloads. The vehicles with their completed loads are parked in front of the building. From there, the 17 delivery trucks swarm out into the surrounding region at 4 a.m. the following morning.

Delivery driver Christian Walter opens the sliding tarpaulin of his bright red Antos 2540. Then he gives forklift driver Siegfried Schmülling a sign. Siegfried Schmülling drives a so-called triple forklift. It can carry up to three palettes at the same time. This can quickly add up to a weight of three and a half tons. Where each pallet gets put aboard the truck depends on the conditions on site at the customer's premises: is there a ramp? How big is the order? Does the customer have a forklift of their own or will it be necessary to unload with the small hand-operated forklift that is always on board?

The customer base includes large-scale customers such as retail chains and restaurants such as the Hafenkantine inn, Bremerhaven. But the small kiosk that regularly orders the minimum quantity of litre bottles is also supplied.In such cases the driver sometimes collects small cash payments. This broad spectrum is precisely what Christian Walter enjoys. The 28-year-old driver has been working at Coca-Cola for four years and has been a driver in the "red fleet" for almost two years.Mainly in the city centre of Bremen – that is 70 kilometres per tour with many stops.